


Beyond the Paradox

by suicider00m



Category: Bandom, Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Angst, Hopeful Ending, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Lucid Dreaming, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-19
Updated: 2016-10-19
Packaged: 2018-08-23 11:59:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8327032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suicider00m/pseuds/suicider00m
Summary: So shut your eyes, kiss me goodbye, and sleep.





	

**Author's Note:**

> y’all have no idea how hard it was to not name this ‘wake me up (wake me up inside)’
> 
> summary from Sleep by My Chemical Romance

There was a time when Josh would dread having to open his eyes; now it was all he wished for. 

He was trapped in the decrepit wasteland of his mind, unable to get out no matter how long or far he walked. He’d leave the city only to enter it once more, each road out just another road back in. It took him a while to realize that the laws of physics didn’t apply in dreams. 

The city itself was a weird, fucked up version of Columbus, but at the same time it wasn’t. It looked like the city, had the same buildings and places that Josh remembered: the Schottenstein Center, where he had gone to see a basketball game with his family a few months ago; the tiny concert venue, The Basement, where he had played his first ever show as the fill in (now permanent) drummer for a friend’s band; his parents’ house, the place he grew up in and the one place that still felt somewhat like home. Everything was the same but constantly changing. 

Streets switched names and building moved around, whole neighborhoods appearing and disappearing in the same day. He’d walk inside a place and it would be completely empty; he’d look away for a second and then as soon as he turned back, the room would be fully furnished. Sometimes he couldn’t see things properly. They’d flicker and fuzz out, no amount of squinting making his vision clearer. 

The city looked as though Death had come and gone, destroying all he came across and sparing none from his decaying touch. Everything was cracking and crumbling and falling away, turned to dust and ash by some otherworldly force too powerful to put into words. There was no wind or weather, no mist or fog or anything to make any piece of dirt move in the slightest. It simply sat where it fell, small piles and thick layers almost entirely undisturbed. Josh wondered if, one day, he’d turn to dust too. 

He used the term ‘one day’ loosely, as time didn’t seem to exist. Days and nights, there was no difference. The sky was just a constant, looming expanse of smothering grey, clouds casting their shadows over the city. Unlike normal clouds, these didn’t move; they hovered above the city, eerily still, almost as though they were waiting to take that final step before falling. 

He was stuck in a strange paradox, a dream in which he knew he was asleep but he couldn’t wake up. Trapped within the downward spiral of his subconscious, he began to slowly go insane without any sort of purpose.

He didn’t need to eat, as he never felt hunger. No physical pains or aches, endless walking didn’t tire him out at all. Any and all bodily functions were pointless, even breathing was done more out of habit than as a necessity. Sleep was futile, impossible but still sought after. He’d lie down and close his eyes, but it didn’t do anything as the image of the ruined city was burned into his brain. The peace of slumber never came.

He supposed that part of the reason he couldn’t sleep was because he was already asleep, but he still couldn’t suppress the exhaustion that gnawed at him every waking moment (which was all of them). It wasn’t physical, though; his eyes weren’t bloodshot, his shoulders did not dip down with the weight of his weariness, he did not yawn or rub his eyes or feel his eyelids start to droop. No, the fatigue was all in his mind, but somehow that made it even worse. 

He couldn’t wake up, he couldn’t fall asleep, he couldn’t do anything but continue to walk. He was stuck wandering around a completely still, totally silent city as he tried desperately to wake up despite not remembering ever falling asleep.

He never stopped searching for a way out, always exploring in an attempt to find a real way out. More than a few times he found himself at the tops of building, trying to get up the nerve to just jump and finish this whole thing, but he was far too scared to do it. He didn’t mind heights or dying, it was the fall that really frightened him. He would stand on top of buildings and look down, and suddenly the world around him would change: a bridge, water beneath, and he was always falling until he looked back up. 

He swore that once he woke up, he would never sleep again. 

(If he woke up, that is.)

He kept walking and the city kept transforming, and nothing ever changed until, one day, it did. 

To say the least, he was shocked when he first saw the boy. After spending what felt like an eternity completely and utterly alone, he was terrified to see another person in the desolate wasteland that was his mind. He stood, frozen, staring at the figure sat on the curb of the street just a couple of yards away, desperately trying to force his feet to turn the other way and _run_.

Considering this was only a dream, Josh had no real reason to feel scared. He couldn’t get hurt in dreams, and certainly not by a figment of his imagination (not to mention that the guy looked far too small and skinny to really be a threat), but it still terrified him to think about the possibility that maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t entirely alone. 

Then again, if the guy was just a character that his mind made up, wouldn’t that mean he was still alone? 

After an intense internal debate, Josh decided he might as well go talk to the kid. He was just a piece of Josh’s mind, and since Josh was aware that he was dreaming, he could easily take control of the situation if things got out of hand. (If that was really true, then why couldn’t he make himself wake up?)

He approached the kid, paces slow and measured carefully as though he was hoping that the city might change enough so that the strange boy would be whisked away before Josh could reach him. Unfortunately for him, that was not the case as he soon found himself sitting on the curb next to the kid, arms wrapped loosely around crossed legs. 

“Hi.”

It was strange, speaking. He hadn’t spoken a word since he had fallen asleep, never called out for help once in his travels throughout the city. It wasn’t hoarse, wasn’t difficult to get his tongue and lips to move properly after such long disuse; it was as though he had been talking the whole time. His voice was steady and sure, no tremors or cracks able to be heard. 

God, he had forgotten what it was like to hear things. The city had been silent, not even his footsteps making echoes in the empty world around him. He could feel as the word made its way from his throat to his tongue where it dripped like a drop of water from a leaky faucet. The word fell into the water of the world around him, rippling across the surface of the air as he waited for more drops to fall.

The boy turned to face at him, not surprised by his presence. He studied Josh, staring at the features of his face, eyes flicking quickly back and forth as he took in the other boy’s appearance. Josh wondered what he looked like; he couldn’t find a mirror and the glass in this world was strange, swallowing up his reflection into a pool of ink from a spilled pen. Brief panic overtook him as he realised that he had no idea whether he was naked, but a quick glance downward assured him that he was, in fact, wearing clothes. When he looked back up, the boy seemed to have a small smile on his face, amused a though he knew what Josh was thinking. (If he was part of Josh’s mind, did he actually know what Josh was thinking?)

“Hey.”

The boy’s voice was soft, tentative; if it weren’t for his relaxed attitude, Josh might even think that the boy was scared. Of what, though? This place? _Him?_ Could his mind’s personifications even be scared of him?

“I’m Josh.”

“Tyler.”

Josh hummed thoughtfully. “Weird, I don’t think I’ve met you before.” Tyler’s expression became confused. “You can’t dream about someone you’ve never seen before, right?”

A wry smile made it’s way onto the boy’s face. “So what you’re saying is I’m just a figment of your imagination?”

“Aren’t you?”

Tyler didn’t reply. Instead, he continued to smile as though he knew something Josh didn’t (which was impossible because Josh made him up so Josh knew everything he knew, which was really everything that Josh knew and god, this whole thing was starting to give him a headache).

“Do you want to go to my house?” Tyler blurted out, abruptly pulling Josh out of his thoughts. He nodded, returning the boy’s smile for the first time. 

“I’d like that.”

Tyler was… interesting. Not in a bad way, not at all; he just wasn’t what Josh was expecting. Standing up side by side, Josh was surprised to notice that the boy was just as tall as he was, perhaps even taller if he stood up straight from his seemingly natural slouch. For someone who had sat so still, he had a surprisingly large amount of ticks and quirks that kept him constantly moving: biting his nails, running his fingers through his hair, rubbing at his face, tugging at his shirt sleeves, constantly itching and scratching. He couldn’t stop fidgeting. 

He was quiet, only participating in conversation when Josh initiated it. His voice remained soft but also steady, not like he was afraid to speak up but rather he didn’t need to. Nevertheless, his voice echoed into the silence that surrounded him and Josh was reminded of a violin, the way the strings reverberated on a long, drawn-out note. He felt the vibrations of the bow on the string in his throat, the melody formed from his lips and transcribed by his tongue. He spoke in symphonies that resonated in Josh’s soul.

Tyler’s “house,” as it turned out, was not actually a house, but a treehouse in the forest behind his actual house. Tyler led him through the trees without a problem, following some path that Josh couldn’t see. Unlike the city, the woods were constantly changing even when Josh was looking right at it. Trees moved places, ditches and roots cropped up without warning and more than once Josh found himself walking into a tree or scraping his knees on the hard dirt of the forest floor.

Once they had scaled the rope ladder and were in the treehouse, everything stopped moving. For once, nothing changed when Josh blinked or looked away and he nearly found himself moved to tears by the flood of relief that came with the realization. He found his eyes wandering over the room, wanting to take in as much of it as possible.

The treehouse, although a decent size for what it was, was not very big. An entire wall was taken up by a small mattress, on which a blanket and pillow rested messily. Above the bed was a small window, the glass panes caked with dirt and dust but not so much that they couldn’t be seen through. There was a small coffee table against the opposite wall, cluttered with journals, pens, books, and various trinkets that made Josh’s fingers twitch with the urge to touch and play with. There was even a ukulele, covered under a stack of doodles and journal pages. 

All the walls had pictures and posters taped on them. There were bands and musicians, from David Bowie to Bob Marley, as well as artists — Van Gogh seemed to be popular — and people that Josh didn’t really know but recognized as celebrities. There were also a lot of photographs, mostly landscapes or nature shots but the occasionally urban photograph mixed in with the lot. There was a whole section of photos devoted to polaroids, all which pictured people and places that Josh didn’t really remember. 

“Is this your first time here?”

Josh turned around to see Tyler sitting cross-legged on the mattress, elbow resting on his knee and head propped up on his hand. The boy was staring at him with a calculating look, almost as though he was studying Josh. 

“I guess? I mean, I’ve never had this dream before, so… yeah.”

“What if this isn’t a dream?”

Josh shrugged. “Then I’m in Hell.”

Tyler didn’t reply. Josh didn’t say anything else.

⌀ ⌀ ⌀

“What are you writing?”

Tyler had been writing in a journal for a ridiculously long time. His arm didn’t move in a graceful, fluid motion, the words didn’t pour from his pen in a waterfall of literary genius. Rather, it was short and choppy, letter scribbled hastily and scratched out before being rewritten the scratched out again, the process repeated countless times until he was satisfied and could move on. When he wasn’t writing, his fingers would tap out a rhythm against the page and his pen would be between his teeth (Josh was waiting for it to explode). 

Josh had been watching him for as long as he could without interrupting, but the curiosity had finally gotten the best of him. He couldn’t help the question that spilled from his lips, wishing he could take it back immediately as Tyler’s face was taken over by an anxious expression. He opened his mouth to let out a, “Nevermind,” when Tyler jerkily nodded his head, pen pulled from his mouth and throat cleared before he began to read.

“‘As I walked down the hall, I realized that no preacher could save me now. My demons had come knocking and I couldn’t turn them away. There was no forgiveness, only punishment. No love, only disappointment. I cried out with the fury of my damned soul, “Father, don’t let me drown!” My prayer was answered; I was burned alive.’”

“Jesus Christ,” Josh breathed out, shocked at what he had just heard. Tyler was a part of him, so those words, those feelings, they were his. Right? Josh had never been one for writing, always preferring the rhythm to the lyrics, but was he really capable of this? Was there a part of him that could create such poetry?

“Do I really feel that way?”

Tyler shrugged. “Do you?”

Josh didn’t know. 

They sat together in silence once again, Tyler scribbling away and Josh fidgeting with a rubber band he had found. He’d stretch it and let it go, catching it around his thumb so it wouldn’t be flicked away. He wished he could feel the sting as it slapped against his skin, but all he felt was a dull thud. There was no pain in dreams, only numbness.

Yet another unbearable aspect of this cerebral ghost town. He couldn’t feel anything. Nothing was hot or cold to the touch, scraped knees and papercuts were painless, textures subdued to the point of being indistinguishable. With so little to actually experience, sometimes Josh felt like he didn’t exist.

It was as though he was a ghost, unable to move on from the world he once knew. Nothing was real to him because, technically, he wasn’t real either. He was a spectre, a shadow of the person he once was, desperately holding on to the bits and pieces of himself he could remember; those were slowly slipping through his fingers, however. Eventually, he would lose himself completely. 

Maybe he _was_ dead. He didn’t remember dying, though, although he supposed no one really remembered dying. Because they were dead. The same way that no one really remembered falling asleep. They could remember until they fell asleep, but actually slipping into unconsciousness was completely unnoticeable and therefore immemorable. But surely Josh would realize if he was dead. Even if he couldn’t remember dying, he’d remember everything that would have happened before he actually died, unless he died in his sleep (which was incredibly unlikely). Obviously, since he couldn’t remember anything even remotely related to his death, that meant he wasn’t dead, right?

“I’m dreaming, right?” he asked Tyler, pausing the boy yet again in his writing. “You’re a figment of my imagination and I’m dreaming, _right?”_

Tyler considered the suggestion for a moment before shrugging. “Maybe _I’m_ the one dreaming and you’re actually a figment of my imagination.”

Josh snickered before growing serious once more. “But really.”

Tyler shrugged again. “You said it yourself. I’m just a figment of your imagination, so I only know what you know.”

Josh let out a groan of frustration, burying his face in his hands. All he wanted was the truth, to understand what was going on. “I wish this dream would end, but…” he trailed off. 

“But what?”

He couldn’t explain why he didn’t want to, but, “then I’d have to wake up.”

⌀ ⌀ ⌀

“I feel like the Abominable Snowman in Monsters, Inc. must have felt after Mike and Sully left.”

They were still in the treehouse, Tyler sat against a wall and Josh sprawled across the bed on his back. They hadn’t left since they got there, Josh couldn’t guess at how long that was though. Days, months, hours, minutes; he had no idea. What he did know was that the constant scratching of pen against paper would have driven him crazy if he didn’t interrupt. 

“That was my favorite movie as a kid.”

“Really?” Josh was surprised. “I thought we’d have the same one, considering… well, you know.”

Tyler shrugged. “What’s your— _our_ favorite kid’s movie then?”

Josh went silent for a moment. Despite his quick rebuttal earlier, he couldn’t sort through his thoughts to find the information he needed. Was Monsters, Inc. his favorite kid’s movie after all? It had to have been, since Tyler said so. Josh didn’t want to admit that he was wrong, though, so rather than concede he blurted out the next movie that came to mind.

“Fight Club.”

Tyler laughed, startled. “That’s _definitely_ not a kid’s movie.” 

“Your _face_ isn’t a kid’s movie.” 

The boys kept straight faces for six seconds before they burst into a fit of giggles, laughing so hard they ended up curled in on themselves and grasping their sides. Eventually they calmed down, wiping tears from the corners of their eyes and sighing through wide grins. As he sobered up, Josh realized that was the first time he had smiled, let alone laughed, in this place. It was scary, the way joy felt so foreign to him. He had forgotten what it was like to be happy.

Maybe he couldn’t wake up because, deep down, he didn’t _want_ to wake up.

The more he thought about it, the more he realized that his depression didn’t only exist in his dreamworld. His life before all of this had been… well, it hadn’t been awful, but it hadn’t been great either. 

He was having difficulty in school, unable to concentrate on the lessons or work assigned to him. His grades were dropping and his teachers were always on his ass about it, saying, “I know that you’re capable of so much more, Joshua,” or, “You just need to apply yourself, Joshua.” Joshua, Joshua, Joshua; how disappointing.

His friends were being assholes. To be fair, they were always assholes, but they had been even more so recently. Teasing him relentlessly no matter how many times he told them to _shut up, I’m not in the mood, leave me alone._ All because he refused to kiss some girl at a party. He didn’t want to kiss her; it was nothing against the girl, he just didn’t want to lock lips with a complete stranger. Did that really warrant all the ‘faggot’ comments?

His parents, although well-intentioned, just made things worse. As incentive for him to do better in school, they grounded him and took away his phone and laptop, telling him he would be given his previous privileges back once he got his grades back up. What they didn’t realize was that rather than spend the majority of his waking hours on the internet or skateboarding around the neighborhood, he just lay in his bed and did nothing. 

Church was the worst, though. He believed in God and all that, he just didn’t like the things the pastor would say about other people. Jesus said you were supposed to love everyone, and yet all he saw was judgement and hatred in a place that was supposed to welcome anyone. They would pick and choose which parts of the bible to follow; “you can’t be gay but feel free to eat shrimp!” Their hypocrisy was sickening. 

The worst of it though was the way they would look at him, frowning at his pink mohawk and gauges as though they couldn’t be any less distasteful with their ill-fitting pantsuits and ugly shoes. Add in the rumor that he was a fag and, well, things weren’t too great for him. The rumors weren’t even true. Well, not entirely true, anyway. He wasn’t _gay_ , but he wasn’t, like, _straight_ either. He just sort of didn’t care. He was attracted to all sorts of people, gender didn’t matter to him. To be honest, the whole thing was just confusing and he couldn’t be bothered to figure it out. 

It would help to be able to talk it out, but that wasn’t an option. His friends, family, they just wouldn’t understand. Sure, his siblings would be accepting, but they would just think he was gay when he wasn’t (well, not completely). He used to have a therapist, back when things were worse, but the guy was a Christian therapist that his parents had found through church so any hope of actually working through his problems went out the window. All his advice went back to prayer or asking for forgiveness, and Josh wasn’t against either but it would be nice to actually understand what was going on in his head rather than just ask God to fix everything.

“I’m gay.”

Tyler snickered. “Same.”

“No, I— I didn’t mean— I’m not—” Josh sighed, frustrated. “I don’t know, man. I like guys, but I also like girls. And sometimes I like people who aren’t either. So I’m not _gay,_ gay, but I am gay. Does that make sense?”

He looked to the other boy, scared to see whatever expression would be on his face, but all he saw was understanding. 

“Totally,” Tyler said, nodding. “You don’t have to label yourself, you know. You can just… do your thing.” He crawled across the floor to sit next to Josh, bumping his shoulder in a friendly gesture. “I like girls and boys, and I guess I identify as bisexual, but like, labels are difficult, dude. You don’t have to define yourself, you know. You can just like who you like, and let that be it.”

“What if I like you?” Josh asked. Tyler laughed. “Then you’re a narcissist.” Josh chuckled, playfully nudging his shoulder against Tyler’s. He turned to look at the boy, letting his head fall back until it rested against the wall. He didn’t bother to carry on the conversation, just stared at the boy sitting next to him.

“Can I kiss you?” 

“Why?” Tyler asked, not surprised or judgemental but genuinely curious. 

Josh shrugged. “Because this is a dream and I’m tired of being lonely, I guess.” Tyler smiled, disappointed.

“Then no.”

⌀ ⌀ ⌀

Tyler was strumming on his ukulele, quietly humming along as Josh worked on carving his name into the wall of the treehouse. He was using a pen, the ink long run dry as he gouged the tip into the wood over and over again. Tyler’s name was right above the spot he had chosen, crude and messy but nonetheless unmistakable.

He leaned back to admire his handiwork, realizing that he had capitalized the ‘h’ but not any of the other letters. He huffed out a laugh as he read the disorderly ‘josH,’ shaking his head and running his fingers over both of the names on the wood. His name was cleaner but Tyler’s was deeper, the grooves pushed farther into the light-colored wood. He traced the letters slowly, ignoring the occasional catch of skin on a small splinter.

“I don’t even remember falling asleep,” Josh said suddenly, interrupting Tyler’s song. The boy just shrugged, picking up the conversation as though he hadn’t been lost in his own world just a few moments ago. 

“I don’t think anyone really does. It sort of just happens, you know? Like dying.” 

Josh scrunched up his face. “Are you trying to tell me I’m dead?”

“You always try to tell me I’m not real,” Tyler countered, levelling his gaze at Josh before going back to plucking the strings on his ukulele. Every few moments he’d try something new, making a wry face if it didn’t match with the melody he was trying to make. Occasionally he’d play a note or a chord and his face would light up, nearly dropping the ukulele in his haste to write it down on the paper he kept in front of him. 

Josh watched as Tyler went back to strumming on his instrument, chewing on the pen in his mouth as deft fingers moved over frets. He wondered how many pens had exploded in Tyler’s mouth before, but then he remembered that, outside of his mind, _Tyler didn’t exist._

There was a sudden clatter as the ukulele fell to the floor. Tyler crumpled up the piece of paper and hurled it out the window with all of his anger behind it. The sudden display of emotion startled Josh, who was used to the boy’s usual apathy. Tyler turned on him then, fury and fatigue creating a rather conflicted expression. 

“It’s starting to seem like you hate me, and, I mean, that’s _fine,_ but could you just stop pretending not to?” 

Confused, Josh shrugged. “I hate myself, so I probably do hate you.” He was going to say it was nothing personal, but it kind of was, all things considered. Tyler shook his head in disappointment, the disgust and loathing evident on his face.

“You’re unbelievable,” he said, before turning around and climbing out the window. Josh was confused until he heard the scuffle of shoes on the roof of the treehouse. 

Josh sat there for a while, shocked and uncertain of what to do next, before he made up his mind and followed out the window. He gripped the eave above him, using his legs to push up off the window ledge and pull his body onto the rooftop. Rolling over onto his back, one leg still hanging off the side, he noticed Tyler hastily rubbing at his cheeks. He pretended not to notice.

“I’m sorry.”

“No you’re not,” Tyler replied, laugh wet and humorless. “You don’t think I _exist,_ remember?”

“Tyler, I—”

“Don’t,” he said, turning away. “Just— don’t.”

Josh sighed, pushing himself up and crawling over next to the boy. He tried to place a reassuring hand on his shoulder but the boy just shrugged him off, shuffling away so they weren’t so close, though still sitting side by side. Josh gave up on trying to get closer, crossing his legs and pulling them into his chest. 

Like Tyler, he stared out into the forest, the trees and leaves fading in and out as everything in this world seemed to do. It reminded him of those blurry paintings, the Impressionist ones, where you could see the subject but whenever you tried to look closer, the whole image dissolved into meaningless smudges of swirled colors.

For the first time in a very long time, Josh began to cry. His face twisted up and he buried his head between his knees as silent sobs shook his body. Tears ran down his cheeks, falling from his chin and onto his ripped jeans. He couldn’t help the soft sniffle that eventually escaped. 

“You know,” Tyler said, voice just a hoarse whisper, “you’re not the only one who wants to leave this place.”

⌀ ⌀ ⌀

“Why is it like this?” Josh asked as they wandered through the city. “It’s Columbus, but it’s like a bomb was dropped on it or something. And it keeps changing, I don’t know how to explain it.”

Tyler didn’t reply until they reached an intersection, where he paused and took a moment to look at the buildings and streets that surrounded them. “This place is only a memory,” he said, “and it’s dying.”

“So this _is_ a dream,” Josh said, but Tyler shook his head. He hesitated, not entirely sure how to explain it, before settling on, “It’s in between.”

“In between what?”

Tyler shrugged. “It’s just in between.”

They ended up at a children’s park, the equipment old and nearly rusted through. Josh sat on a swing, gently toeing himself back and forth as he watched Tyler revolve on the roundabout. Josh got dizzy just standing still in this place, he didn’t understand how the boy could stand spinning through an already inconstant world. 

Although, he supposed as he watched Tyler turn faster and faster, the constant blur might be nice; he wouldn’t notice the change because he didn’t see it in the first place. To him, it was just a blur of muted grays, ceramic on a pottery wheel. It was only when he stopped, when he stood up to properly see, that it cracked.

That was his life, Josh supposed. He ignored his problems for as long as he could. He pretended not to see that his parents had basically given up on him, had just accepted the fact that he would end up being absolutely nothing; he pretended not to see the way the kids at school looked at him and talked behind raised hands; he pretended not to see the way his thoughts were slowly killing him, the way they twisted his thoughts into believing that he was okay, that he didn’t need help, that the bridge down the street wasn’t becoming more and more irresistible. 

He was trying to tell a joke to which he had forgotten the punchline, and he was the only one laughing.

“I can’t admit it, but I need help.”

Tyler stopped spinning. “You just admitted it, though.” 

“That doesn’t count,” Josh whispered, shaking his head. “You aren’t real.”

“Fuck you,” Tyler spat, venom dripping from his tongue. Josh almost fell off the swing, not expecting the fury with which Tyler spoke. 

“Just because I’m not real to you doesn’t mean I’m not real to me.”

It hurt his heart to say so, but, “You’re not real _at all._ You’re just an imaginary friend I made up so I wouldn’t have to be alone anymore.”

“You didn’t make me,” Tyler shouted, standing up with fists clenched tightly by his side. “If anything, I made _myself_ out of raw material you thought wasn’t worth shaping.”

“Tyler, I’m not trying to be mean, it’s just the truth. _You aren’t real.”_

“Forget about the truth for a second!”

Josh blinked and Tyler was suddenly in front of him, shaking with anger. He shoved him as hard as he could, pushing him off the swing and knocking the breath out of him. 

Josh closed his eyes, trying to catch his breath, and when he opened them, they were back in the treehouse.

“What—”

“Don’t follow me,” Tyler yelled. Josh blinked and they were in a child’s bedroom. 

The room was cluttered but clean, sneakers and sports equipment pushed under beds and spilling out of the closets. Two single beds, both messily made, were pushed against adjacent walls, the mantels above filled with basketball and football memorabilia from trophies and medals to autographed balls and photos.

He noticed two portraits on one of the shelves, each one showing a different boy. It wasn’t until he looked closer that he realized one of the boys was a much younger version of Tyler. What was this place and why did Tyler bring him here? He looked to the boy who was looking more and more panicked by the minute. 

“Tyler, I don’t—”

“Stop it!” Tyler screeched, and they were on the rooftop of a skyscraper. “Stop following me!”

“I don’t know—” in the middle of the forest “—what I’m doing.” Josh was begging, pleading Tyler to stop, for this whole thing to end. He grabbed onto the boy’s wrist, gripping tightly as he immediately began to fight it.

“Just leave me alone!” Tyler screamed, and they were on a bridge. They were on _the_ bridge, the one down the street from Josh’s house, the one he’d go to in the middle of the night and sit on the railing, hoping to slip but never doing so. 

“Why do you keep doing this to me?” Tyler wailed, tears falling freely and small frame lurched by the heavy sobs he couldn’t keep back.

Josh couldn’t take it anymore.

“I don’t know!” he screamed, pushing Tyler away. He vaguely registered seeing the boy fall on the ground, but he couldn’t find it in himself at that moment to care. “I don’t know, okay? I don’t know why I keep following you, I don’t know how you keep doing that teleporting thing, I don’t know why I’m here in the first place! I don’t know, okay? So don’t ask me any more questions because I don’t have the answers!”

Silence. 

Josh turned around and Tyler was gone. He was alone again.

He started to scream.

His voice, broken and cracked, was deafening in the silence, resounding in the stifling air of a lifeless city. He screamed for himself, for his pain and his anger at being trapped in such a place with no one but his broken mind for company. He screamed because wasn’t Josh anymore; he was a shattered reflection of someone else, a piece of a shredded photograph lying on an unswept floor. He screamed because he had nothing else inside. 

He stopped abruptly, turning back around. He walked slowly, his steps meticulous and measured, until he reached the bridge’s railing. Looking down he saw nothing, only a swirling secret of white and grey. It was as though the clouds had dropped from the sky, coming to rest beneath a rusty old bridge that nobody knew about. 

Nobody knew about the bridge, and nobody cared about him. There wasn’t anyone to care about him. He was alone, trapped in a dream he couldn’t wake up from. He found himself sitting on the handrail, hands holding onto the metal as his feet dangled over oblivion. He didn’t care about waking up, he just wanted it to _end._

His hands gripped the railing, feeling the weight of possibility. After years of being held back, he had forgotten how to stop himself. 

He fell.

⌀ ⌀ ⌀

He didn’t open his eyes at first.

His head was pillowed in someone’s lap, hands stroking through his hair as the person hummed softly above him. They were warm, their hands gentle as their fingers brushed through knots. They even smelled nice, like coffee and nutmeg on a cold Autumn day. He let himself live in the moment, wondering briefly if he was in Heaven.

He opened his eyes. He was still in Hell.

Tyler was the one above him, murmuring sweet melodies though he stopped abruptly once he noticed Josh was awake. His hand movements stuttered, the awkwardness growing until Josh pushed back into the calming cradle of the boy’s palms and he started his ministrations again.

“I knew I wouldn’t get into Heaven,” Josh whispered, closing his eyes again. If he didn’t have to look, then he could pretend he wasn’t still stuck in the nightmare of a dreamscape. 

“Doesn’t mean you’ll end up in Hell, though,” Tyler replied, wrapping one of Josh’s curls around his finger. He let it fall away before he did the same to another strand, then another. 

“You’re not a bad person,” he continued, “and I know you think you are but you’re not. You don’t deserve to hurt… nobody does.” Josh found himself looking up at Tyler with reverence reserved for an angel.

“I wish you were real,” he sighed, and Tyler sadly smiled down at him. His softly rubbed his thumb over Josh’s cheek, tracing the bone to the edge of his hair and then back again.

“One day you’re going to wake up and everything but you is going to be different.” 

“Like in The Walking Dead?” Josh teased, trying to lighten the melancholy mood. The world was dark enough already without their sadness to add to it. 

“Sure, Josh,” Tyler said, giggling. “When you wake up—” 

“If.”

“As I was saying, _when_ you wake up, the world will have been destroyed by zombies and and you’ll meet the super badass love of your life, only they’ll get bitten and you’ll have to mercy kill them but you won’t be able to and they’ll never forgive you as they’re forced to live out a fate worse than death.”

Josh stared at Tyler, confused and mildly terrified. “You sound like you’ve had quite a lot of experience with this.” Tyler shrugged, a coy smile on his face.

“I get around.”

He began to hum again, a new tune that made Josh’s heart ache with homesickness. He nestled his his head further into Tyler’s lap, allowing the boy’s legs to block his views to the sides. The only thing he could see was Tyler, and he was more than okay with that.

They spent an eternity like that, pretending that the world around them didn’t exist and, in a way, Josh supposed it didn’t. The treehouse was the only thing that didn’t flicker like fire, always different from what it was before; the world around them would always change but there, in their secret getaway, they were real. Josh thought he was kind of beginning to understand. 

“Why did you jump?”

He didn’t realize Tyler had stopped humming until he spoke; he didn’t realize he had closed his eyes until he had to open them. 

“You’re worried it’s your fault,” Josh whispered.

“I _know_ it’s my fault,” Tyler replied, voice just as quiet. “I just want you to lie to me so I can feel better.”

Josh sighed. “I just… didn’t want to be here anymore. I still don’t, to be honest.”

“Why’s that?”

He shrugged. “It’s not living, not really.”

“And what you were doing before, that was living?” Tyler asked. Not judgemental, never judgemental, only ever curious. 

“It was a hell of a lot better than this.”

Tyler started to hum again. Josh closed his eyes again. It was different this time, though. He had felt tired, _exhausted,_ the entire time he had been in this personal Hell, but for the first time he actually felt like he could fall _asleep._ His eyelids were heavy, he didn’t have to try to keep them shut. He could feel himself slowly drifting as he stared into nothing, could feel unconsciousness slowly pulling at him, but at the same time he felt like he was wide awake.

“Go to sleep, Josh.” 

Tyler sounded… sad. 

“I can’t.” 

He didn’t want to fall asleep because he knew that this would end. Sure, he wanted to get out of this place and never come back, but leaving here meant leaving _Tyler,_ and he didn’t want to do that. He’d finally found someone who understood him, who didn’t judge him or look at him any differently for the things he said. He’d found someone who loved him — was it love? — unconditionally, and he wouldn’t be able to forgive himself if he let that go.

“Just try,” Tyler said, voice soft and soothing, and Josh couldn’t hold back his next words. 

“Sing to me?”

He couldn’t see, but he knew Tyler was smiling, small and soft and with a hint of pain. “Okay.”

He feels as Tyler stretches to grab the ukulele, shifting around a little so he can play it properly. He strums once, just open strings, and Josh keeps closed eyes as he tries not to cry when Tyler begins to properly play.

_“I wanna fall inside your ghost, and fill up every hole inside my mind. I wanna strip myself of breath, a breathless piece of death I've made for you. A mortal writing piece of song will help me carry on, but this you heard.”_

His voice was rough, cracking on the higher notes but it was perfect in every imperfection. It was like pebbles falling on a travelled path, crunching beneath boots in Autumn as cars passed by on roads too close to be comforting. 

_“I said, ‘Don't be afraid. We're going home.’”_

It was incomplete, unfinished, even Josh could tell. But he was still sharing it, and that’s what mattered. But then Tyler paused, the music stopped, and Josh didn’t dare to open his eyes. A deep breath.

_“So the hearse ran out of gas, a passenger person grabbed a map and the driver inside it contrived a new route to save the past and checked his watch and grabbed a cab, a beautifully plain taxi cab. A cab, had it cleared out back and two men started to unpack._

_“Driving once again but now this time there were three men and then I heard one of them say, ‘I know the night will turn to gray. I know the stars will start to fade when all the darkness fades away. We had to steal him from his fate so he could see another day.’”_

Josh could feel himself slipping away. The weight of the world around him was no longer suffocating; the burden of the ghost town was free from his shoulders, fading into the nothingness. The ever-changing city was no more, just a whisper of the ghost it once was. All that existed was the treehouse and Tyler.

_“Then I cracked open my box; someone must have picked the lock. A little light revealed the spot where my fingernails had fought. then I pushed it open more, pushing up against the door, then I sat up off the floor and found the breath I was searching for._

_“Then there were three men up front, all I saw were backs of heads and then I asked, ‘Am I alive and well or am I dreaming dead?’ And then one turned around to say, ‘We're driving toward the morning, son, where all your blood is washed away and all you did will be undone.’”_

Josh tried to fight it, tried to fight the sleep that was slowly overtaking him but his efforts were all in vain. He couldn’t stay awake.

_“And I said, ‘Don’t be afraid. We’re going home.’”_

He wanted to see Tyler’s face, but he couldn’t open his eyes.

“Go home, Josh.”

He felt himself falling, just like he had before. Off the bridge, both of them, plunging into the depths of unconsciousness as he tried to stay afloat. The treehouse disappeared, and Tyler was all that was left. Sinking beneath the surface, Josh couldn’t do anything as he was slowly dragged down — or was it up?

“Don’t forget about me, okay?” Tyler whispered. He placed a soft, innocent kiss to Josh’s lips, and then he was gone.

Josh opened his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to Sarah (hidefromeveryone) for beta-ing this for me :)
> 
>  
> 
> hmu @ twentyoneboyfriends on tumblr


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